Hey readers. After a brief hiatus for the board exam, I'm back. I am of course having less time to blog because of my anger management counseling over having to take the boards again. Did I mention it was the FOURTH time!!!

But, more on that later.

Big news flash..."P4P found to have little impact on care quality". So says the review on a study published in the July/August Health Affairs. The study compared similar groups of physians with one group given incentives (read... we'll give you a little bit of money if you do what we want) vs. the second group of physicians with no incentives to perform quality care (the poor saps just took care of their patients because it was the right thing to do... imagine that).

Guess what? No difference. None. The two groups performed the same. The "quality" measures improved equally over the 3 year study in both groups. The performance was "statistically indistinguishable". The review said "there is a fundamental problem with the P4P programs: They have little to no impact on quality". Really. The nerve of these guys screwing up such a great idea like that. They took good care of their patients because... get this... they're doctors, and it's what they signed up for in the first place. Whoda believed.

Not to be daunted by a little thing like data, one reviewer commented that this had little impact on his view of P4P because it was just one component of the overall strategy to improve patient care... presumably the same care provided by the saps without incentives (other than that whole doctor thing).